Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

SSTI to Transport Officials: Start Planning for a Future With Less Driving

For a long time in the United States, driving activity
moved in step with the economy. Since economic growth was fairly steady,
consistent growth in driving was built into all the traffic modeling
the engineers used to plan and build streets and transportation
infrastructure.

Annual,
per-capita vehicle miles traveled by Americans have been declining for
eight years. Image: State Smart Transportation Campaign

But now per capita driving has declined eight straight years in
America. Total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) hasn’t really budged in
five years, and remains below its peak. A number of things have
fundamentally changed since the time when you could chart driving
behavior into the future using an upward line, according to a new paper by the State Smart Transportation Initiative, a think-tank based out of the University of Wisconsin which counts 19 state DOTs among its partners.

SSTI rejects the idea that driving declines reflect the recent
recession, noting that the current slump began in 2004, well before the
recession started. Driving activity actually began to decouple from
economic growth in 2000, SSTI says, and today they do not appear to be
strongly related.
The reasons for the current decline, SSTI reports, are broad cultural
and economic trends that are likely to be “permanent,” or “remain in
effect for a generation or more.”

In the decades prior, driving increases were triggered by factors
like rising household income and auto ownership rates, increasing
participation in the workforce by women, and the swelling ranks of Baby
Boomers in their most active driving years. Today, however, those trends
have abated or are moving in the opposite direction.

Baby Boomers are beginning to retire, and entering a stage in their
lives when they will drive less and less. The American market for car
owners is mostly saturated. Meanwhile, the growth in women’s workforce
participation leveled off more than 10 years ago.

Another big factor is the financial calculus of driving. The cost of
owning a car has been increasing, and not just because gas isn’t dirt
cheap anymore. Maintaining, storing, and insuring a car has become more
expensive too. High levels of congestion in many cities have also
increased the delays and aggravation associated with driving.

Attitudinal shifts among younger Americans are playing a role. Mounting evidence suggests an increasing preference for transit, biking, and walking among the Millennial generation.

Finally, SSTI notes that for years driving was stimulated by policies
that discouraged walkable, mixed-use development: single-use zoning and
parking minimums, for example. But in some places, those policies are
now being reformed.

The upshot is that driving may never increase the way it once did,
SSTI reports. It’s important that public institutions adjust
accordingly.

As the authors say, “these trends suggest a serious need for a new
approach to travel demand forecasting and transportation system design
in the 21st century.”